Celebrating Labor Day

This is the last official holiday of the summer. Kids are already back in school and people are settling down to the routine of school, football games, cheerleading practice and doing homework again.

Bill Shrum

There is another holiday coming up this weekend. I know there are a great deal of people who already know this. This is the last official holiday of the summer. Kids are already back in school and people are settling down to the routine of school, football games, cheerleading practice and doing homework again. Those are the things we all do when school is back into session and will be going on even when we aren't doing them. We will be doing them for someone else.

In the "olden days,” this was the last day before you returned to school. Does anyone around remember those days? This is true. You registered around the last of August, but you didn't start until the day after Labor Day, which was a Tuesday and that was the way it was. You took that three day weekend vacation and didn't get another day off until the Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving week. Remember those days?

Labor Day is always the first Monday in September and has been that way since 1894, when it became law by the United States Congress. It had been floating around since 1882, when the first labor day holiday was celebrated in New York City by the Central Labor Union. Everyone knows that it takes time for everyone else to jump on board and then thinks it is the bet thing since slice bread. That is just the way it is in America.The Pullman Strike is the main reason for the establishment of Labor Day as a holiday. This strike was to appease the working immediately after this event. The Pullman Company manufactured railroad cars and had offered the operating of the sleeping car. This was operated in almost every one of the nation's major railroads. The name of Pullman was a household word.

A strike began, railroad cars were stopped and some of the mail stopped also. The United States Army had to be called to end the strike because the United States mail had to go through. The strike ended, the American Railroad Union President at that time Eugene Debs was jailed for not obeying an injunction that the judge, who disliked unions anyway, had issued against the strikers.

Celebration, observance and parades were held to show the public what labor does for the country. This was done for the family and the workers and became a pattern for a number of years. Speeches were made by prominent individuals and the emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. In later years these demonstrations and celebrations have changed.

The day still is and has been for years to have an emphasis on the worker. Workers in this country, whatever that has been, has built this country from the ground up and everyone in the free world knows that. It needs to be made that this nation pays tribute to them, whatever line of work they may be in, because that is what we do in free society, such as the United States of America.

In recent years, of course, in America, we tend to take things and make them our own such as having sales in the retail stores, opening the NFL and college football games and have an auto race on that day. Only in America can we do things like that and believe me it is all true to us who have lived here all of our lives. Even the school days don't begin the day after Labor Day anymore.

Barbecues, picnics and fireworks displays have replaced some of the celebrations which originally occurred early in the United States. In the larger cities,they do have a number of parades, but not as many as in the early years of the Labor Day celebration. It has always represented the end of the summer and the beginning of fall, which always brings the fall colors and football. So celebrate the workers and do whatever you want to do. Me, I would rather have some barbecue and a nice cool glass of lemonade.

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